China has been churning out power generators at an excessively high speed despite warns by the Chinese government of overheating investment in power plants, machinery industry official said Tuesday.

According to figures released by the China Machinery Industry Federation on Tuesday, the total power-generating capacity of the power generating equipment manufactured by China during the first half of this year stood at 44.80 million kw, up 45.29 percent year-on-year, as against 71 million kw for last year.

Cai Weici, deputy president of the association, said the consequence of the possible excessive growth of power-generating equipment will gradually begin to emerge in 2007 and oversupply will become a problem in the following year.

China's fast economic growth of an annual average of 9.4 percent in the past 27 years since 1978 led to widespread power shortage since early 2004, causing power brownouts in many citiesacross the country.

Power consumption on the Chinese mainland totaled 649.3 billion kwh during the first four months of this year, up 15.5 percent, and industrial consumption is the dominating factor behind the high growth, the official said.

Power consumption by energy-intensive industrial sector, including iron and steel, cement, construction material, and aluminium, continued to grow by at least 20 percent, despite movestaken by the Chinese government since last year to curb investmentin the sector.

The federation said total power consumption is expected to reach 2.456 trillion kwh, up 13 percent year-on-year.

Current fast-growing demand for power-generating equipment willnot be sustainable, and the manufacturing sector should get prepared, the official warned.

He said the manufacturers should be cautious about expanding producing capacity, and move to adapt themselves to tightening requirements about energy-saving and other environmental protection, while working on plans to open up overseas markets.

Source: Xinhua